Best movies like Crossing Borders
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Spain 1960, the dawn of the country's economic development. Industrial "reorganization" means that many workers have lost their jobs and are forced to emigrate. Martin is one of them. Martin, his wife Pilar and their son Pablito live with Martin's parents in a basement apartment that comes with their job as superintendents of the building. Encouraged by Marcos, his friend and co-worker, Martin decides to emigrate to Switzerland. The whole family has to admit that for the time being this is the most promising plan. Unable to obtain a work contract from the Swiss Consulate, Martin and Marcos decide to go anyway, pretending they are tourists to get past the border police. Pablito will experience drastic changes in a short period of time: his father's departure, a new way of life in a different country with a different environment and learning another language. But afterwards, in Switzerland, they will face new experiences which will allow them to live with renewed happiness.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: touching, realistic, semi serious, humorous, feel good, intercultural
Best tv shows and movies like Crossing Borders (2006):
Similar in 83%
The Perfect Stranger (2011)
Plot Summary:
The mysterious arrival of a foreigner to a small village in a Mediterranean island, awake the sudden interest from a diverse group of residents, who will appear unexpectedly in the stranger's life, believing that he's going to reopen an old shop. In contrast, the real intentions of the stranger are hidden behind an old Polaroid photo, which has led him to that place in search of answers.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 326
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: semi serious, humorous, realistic, sincere, light
Similar in 88%
Red Light Revolution (2010)
Plot Summary:
A luckless Beijinger opens an adult shop to make ends meet, sparking a sexual revolution in his conservative neighborhood.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 103
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Australia, China
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, not serious
Similar in 86%
My Piece of the Pie (2011)
Plot Summary:
France, a factory worker, lives with her three daughters in Dunkirk. The factory where she worked has been closed, leaving France and all of her workmates without a job. She decides to go to Paris to look for work. There she finds a cleaning job at the home of a rich man, Steve, whose world is radically different from her own. As their paths keep crossing, she discovers that her employer played a part in closing the factory in Dunkirk.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: France
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: sentimental, humorous, semi serious, realistic
Similar in 84%
Lifelines (2008)
Plot Summary:
Comedy - Lifelines examines an extraordinarily stressful day in the life of a dysfunctional suburban family. Mom Nancy, a schoolteacher, is unable to handle the constant barrage of hostility from her three children. Husband Ira is ineffectual in helping his wife with her anxiety. Older son Mikey is barely able to express himself. Middle child Meghan flouts whatever restrictions her parents place on her, and youngest child Spencer, needs to be handcuffed to the car just to participate in family outings. - Jane Adams, Josh Pais, Joe Morton.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 129
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: humorous, semi serious, touching, emotional, realistic
Similar in 81%
How to Be a Woman and Not Die Trying (1991)
Plot Summary:
Carmen, a journalist with two children, is on her third marriage, to Antonio, a record producer. Over the course of a year, we follow her through her discontents: Antonio's lateness, his fatigue when she wants to make love, his insistence on her company when she prefers solitude, his treating her work as less important than his, his casual and cruel dismissal of her opinions, her boss assigning her an incompetent editor, bartenders ignoring her, her passage into middle age. She can be feisty and edgy, which sometimes gets in the way of what would make her happy. And she regularly threatens to leave Antonio. Will she, and on what terms? What will he do?.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 368
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: clever, feel good, humorous, realistic, witty, semi serious
Similar in 88%
Flowers from Another World (1999)
Plot Summary:
Patricia, a woman from Dominican Republic, needs a home and an economic security that her illegal status in Madrid does not provide her. Milady, twenty, born in Havana and dying to travel the world. Marirosi has a job, a home, and the most complete solitude... just like Alfonso, Damián and Carmelo, men from the St. Eulalia, a village lacking both marrying women and future. A bachelors' party forces the encounter between them and the beginning of this bittersweet story of sharing a living.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 999
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: intercultural, touching, humorous, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 85%
Alila (2003)
Plot Summary:
Life in a flimsy Tel Aviv apartment complex is a sour urban mosaic whose seedy characters, try as they might, can't get out of one another's faces. The character's lives overlap and collide. Gabi, a bobbed haired sexpot, and her lover Hezi—who's older, balding and married—rent a room to have an affair, while Ezra, a pot bellied divorcee, supervises an illegal construction site next door. All this racket drives Schwartz, a Holocaust survivor, to a mental breakdown. Other characters include illegal immigrants, a teenage boy who's afraid to serve in the army, and a corrupt police officer. In each scene the camera moves through walls, over desks, and around rooms in order to keep focused on the character it's following, in moments of drama as well as in moments of mudane daily activity.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 634
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Israel, France
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, serious, realistic, gloomy, avant garde
Similar in 75%
Placido (1961)
Plot Summary:
In a small spanish town, a group of old ladies decide to celebrate Christmas Eve with a "Sit a poor man at your table" dinner: each wealthy household of the town will have a homeless person dining with them that night. The celebrations also include a parade, and in it we find Plácido, the humble owner of a three-wheeler, whose family is forced to live in a public lavatory because of the lack of money to pay the rent, and who has to pay the second bill of his vehicle before midnight or else he will lose it.
IMDB Rating: 7.8
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: social, sentimental, touching, feel good, humorous, realistic, semi serious, biting, suspense
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Chinese Take-Away (2011)
Plot Summary:
A comedy that chronicles a chance encounter between Robert and a Chinese named Jun who wanders lost through the city of Buenos Aires in search of his uncle after being assaulted by a taxi driver and his henchmen.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 19000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Argentina, Spain
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: touching, humorous, semi serious, realistic, social, existential, feel good
Similar in 88%
The Italian (2010)
Plot Summary:
Life smiles at Dino Fabrizzi,a cool forty-two-year old Italian. Not only is he the most successful salesman at The Maserati dealership in Nice but he has had a steady (and hot) relationship with Hélène,his girlfriend, who is beginning to contemplate marriage. To crown it all he is nearly certain to land a senior position at the dealership. But there is a tiny wee problem. The funny Italian is not Italian at all! His real name is Mourad and he is actually of Algerian origin. So, when to please his father (who does not know his son pretends to be Italian), he promises him to celebrate Ramadan he is bound to get into serious trouble.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: France
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: touching, humorous, semi serious, realistic
Similar in 76%
I Belong (2012)
Plot Summary:
A nurse gets into a dispute at work because she switches to speaking English when she gets nervous. A translator compromises her integrity when persuaded to translate a book she doesn't believe in. An elderly woman and her daughter are humiliated when offered a present of one million kroner from a relative. A warm and nuanced film about people who all mean well, but end up hurting one another.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 627
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Norway
Duration: 118 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, touching, semi serious
Similar in 76%
The Sale of Paradise (2012)
Plot Summary:
Many immigrants, when they arrived in Spain, thought they had found paradise, soon thwarted all their dreams of prosperity. Many of them then decided to return to their land, but not so simple. In a pension match various immigrants end up discovering that deportation is the only way to return to his country.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 76
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 106 min
Plot tags: humorous, semi serious, realistic, surreal, light, offbeat
Similar in 83%
All Against All (2013)
Plot Summary:
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IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 366
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: sincere, humorous, realistic, semi serious, biting, suspense
Similar in 90%
Eat Sleep Die (2012)
Plot Summary:
A young Eastern European immigrant working in Sweden is faced with a painful choice when she's laid off from her factory in the name of "efficiencies.".
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Sweden
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: realistic, thought provoking, serious, psychological, crying, sincere, touching
Similar in 87%
Homeland (2013)
Plot Summary:
Farid, a young 26-year-old Frenchman, must travel to Algeria to save his father's house. While discovering this country in which he had never before set foot, he succumbs to the charms of a host of astonishing characters whose humour and simplicity affect him deeply. Amongst these is his cousin, a bright and lively young man who has the dream of one day going to France.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 680
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: France, Morocco, Belgium
Duration: 87 min
Plot tags: touching, humorous, realistic, semi serious, road movie
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Kisses for Everyone (2000)
Plot Summary:
Three students are sent by their families to Cadiz in 1965, his last chance to pass and become what is expected of them. The appearance of some dancers disrupts their commitments: boys lose the course and girls, their work. But together they learn to decide their future.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 398
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: sentimental, feel good, humorous, touching, manga, realistic, semi serious, sexual, sexy
Similar in 78%
The Great Wall Is a Great Wall (1986)
Plot Summary:
When computer programmer, Leo Fang, is passed up for promotion, he feels it is because he is Chinese, and quits. He takes his Chinese-American family to Mainland China to visit his relatives, the Chao's for a vacation. The clash of cultures, between the men, wives, and teenagers, leads to some confusion, and misunderstanding.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 447
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA, China
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: sincere, touching, humorous, realistic, semi serious, independent film
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The Gilded Cage (2013)
Plot Summary:
In the beautiful area of Paris, Maria and José Ribeiro lived for almost thirty years on the ground floor of a Haussmann building, in their dear little lodge.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 11000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: France
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: humorous, touching, semi serious, realistic, intercultural, masterpiece
Similar in 76%
Almanya: Welcome to Germany (2011)
Plot Summary:
After living 45 years in Germany, the Turkish Hüseyin Yilmaz, seventy, announces to his family that he has bought a house in Turkey and they should return to make the necessary reforms. The idea is unwelcome and causes very heated discussions. In addition, Canan, a granddaughter of Hüseyin, announces she is pregnant and the father is her English boyfriend, and no one knew anything. To comfort his cousin Cenk, a child of six years, who was humiliated at school and labeled as "foreign", Canan tells a fantastic story about how they left Turkey and went to Germany.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Germany
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, captivating, sincere, intercultural, sentimental, semi serious
Similar in 87%
Intrepido: A Lonely Hero (2013)
Plot Summary:
A middle-aged man tries to get by in Milan while trying to retain his dignity.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 738
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: humorous, semi serious, touching, realistic, light, feel good
Similar in 87%
2 Francs, 40 Pesetas (2014)
Plot Summary:
Madrid, 1974. Six years have passed since Martin and his family have returned to Spain from Switzerland. A visit to their adopted country will bring complications.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 468
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Spain
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: humorous, semi serious, light, feel good, captivating, sentimental, realistic
Similar in 78%
Cocked (2015)
Plot Summary:
The Paxsons are a broken family working together - and against each other - in the most quintessentially American business, the business of guns.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 662
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 49 min
Plot tags: clever, humorous, realistic, semi serious, independent film
Similar in 86%
Entry Level (2007)
Plot Summary:
After losing his restaurant, chef CLAY MAGUIRE must start his career all over--at the bottom. Pushing forty with no "corporate skill-set", Clay enters the strange world of the Unemployable Interviewees of America. Clay and his fellow job-seekers strive for dignity, success, or at least a job taking customer service calls from prison inmates for minimum wage. A hilarious, insightful look at job interviews, finding the courage to start all over, and life at the ENTRY LEVEL.
IMDB Rating: 5.8
IMDB Votes: 390
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 88%
Paper Birds (2010)
Plot Summary:
Jorge and Enrique are two artist in the post Spanish Civil War times that adopt an orphan child called Miguel. With a varieté company that travel around the country, Jorge and Enrique see the horrors left by the war meanwhile the Republic Army watch Jorge and the rest of the company suspecting that some of them collaborate with the rebels opposite to the Francoist Regime.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 786
Genere: Comedy, Drama, History
Country: Spain
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, semi serious, atmospheric, psychological, captivating, touching
Similar in 81%
The Marchers (2013)
Plot Summary:
In 1983, in France experiencing intolerance and racial violence , three young teens and the priest Minguettes launching a largely peaceful march for equality and against racism, over 1,000 km between Marseille and Paris . Despite the difficulties and resistance encountered, their movement will bring about a real boost of hope in the way of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. They unite with their arrival more than 100 000 people from all walks of life and give France its new face.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 404
Genere: Comedy, Drama, History
Country: France, Belgium
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: humorous, realistic, semi serious, thought provoking, biting, suspense
Similar in 81%
Vizontele (2001)
Plot Summary:
The story takes place in a small town (called Hakkari) in Turkey at the beginning of the 70's. The time has come to bring technology into that small town. The first Television (or called Visiontele by the citizens) arrives and the chaos begins.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 38000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Turkey
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: touching, humorous, semi serious, realistic, feel good, political, poignant, profound
Similar in 76%
Kryptonite! (2011)
Plot Summary:
Set in 1970s Naples, bullied nine year-old Peppino is watching the world around him as his extended dysfunctional family change. Psychedelic flower power and hippie love is threatening the old traditional southern Italian family. Dad is having an affair and Mom has taken to her bed with depression. Super-mod brother and sister Titina and Salvatore take the boy under their wings, introducing him to demonstrations and love-ins, whilst caped superhero Gennaro visits Peppino even after being knocked down and killed by the number 12 bus. It is the imaginary appearances of this older superman cousin that help the nine-year-old navigate the complicated adult world.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 695
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: semi serious, sentimental, touching, humorous, realistic
Similar in 75%
Anita & Me (2002)
Plot Summary:
Meena, a 12-year-old living in a mining village in the English Midlands in 1972, is the daughter of Indian parents who've come to England to give her a better life. This idyllic existence is upset by the arrival in the village of Anita Rutter and her dysfunctional family.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: sentimental, touching, realistic, humorous, semi serious
Similar in 77%
Hula Girls (2006)
Plot Summary:
Young women in a small Japanese town look to revive their home's declining fortunes by building a Hawaiian village tourist attraction.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: Japan
Duration: 121 min
Plot tags: touching, humorous, realistic, semi serious
Similar in 88%
Walkaway (2010)
Plot Summary:
Walkaway, a light-comedy drama, mocks the clutches of social obligations on young Indian professionals settled in New York City.
IMDB Rating: 5.3
IMDB Votes: 813
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: touching, feel good, humorous, realistic, semi serious, independent film